Monthly Archives: May 2016

Yeonmi Park is the kind of person who would never assume to speak too loudly. Born and raised in North Korea, Park was beholden to the horrors that only an oppressive regime could rain down upon you. Park’s escape from North Korea and eventual journey West has captivated audiences around the world and now the young woman is becoming a global icon in the fight against human rights violations. Park recently dropped on Amazon.com a new book, “In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom” and inside of those pages she details every step of her harrowing journey.Park’s life on its surface was as different from yours and mine as could be. She was born into a country where the idea of freedom was considered treason and the concept of ‘eating until full’ was downright unheard of. Park blames the fall of the Soviet Union and the instability in the area as a primary cause for North Korea’s disastrous descent but more pointedly she blames the current political regime.

Yeonmi’s father made one of those ‘wrong moves’ when he tried to make extra money for the family by smuggling supplies to China. He was hauled off to a forced labor camp where he would eventually die of untreated cancer. Park and her mother knew that their time was up in North Korea and so the pair fled with the help of a Chinese smuggler. The smuggler would end up turning on them and selling the pair into slavery once they crossed the border into China. The rest of their journey can be read in Park’s new book which according to the New York Times, “Is a must read!”.